Grey'd out, unselectable model list, and foot controller question

[Tcoz]

I haven't had time to dig into this at all, but I think this should have been straightforward and unfortunately it wasn't. 

I got the Helix Rack. Love the device, its primary use is for my home recording studio. In fact the device is so useful that I actually process everything through it now, bass/synth/vocals/guitar/samples. For what it's worth, adding a touch of tube-based outboard compressor after the helix sounds fantastic when recorded, the Helix is an outstanding source. 

Anyway, I decided to go all in and get the controller. I plugged it in via the provided cat 5 cable, turned it on, the scribble strips showed my bank/patch names, etc.

Question 1: what is "customizable" about the scribble strips? Don't they just show whatever you called the patch?

Then I went to edit what is a fairly straightforward patch. Distortion->EQ->Head->Cab->Delay-Reverb->EQ. No parallel path, etc, just one straight line. (BTW the separation of head/pre from cab, and the ability to move around the mic freely, is fantastic. Six inches away pulls all the shrill right out of the recorded signal and sounds very natural). 

It looked like I had one block left, and since I could build this model easily enough on my PODHD500, I figured I couldn't possibly have capped DSP. So I went to add a volume pedal. 

When I pushed the knob to get to the model list, the list displayed, but was sort of in what appeared to be a "disabled" mode. The text was not as bright as usual, etc. 

I could edit all the other blocks. But I could not add another one. I could move blocks around and all that. But I simply couldn't add another block, the model screen was always sort of "disabled". 

Question 2: what creates this "disabled" condition?

Related somewhat is the expression pedal inputs on the controller.

Question 3: What is the difference between the three expression pedal inputs, and the "toe switch" one? Is there some kind of expression pedal that has a toe switch or something? 

Thanks for any pointers etc. I did try and find these answers elsewhere but had no luck. 

[phil_m]

1) You can change the name of any scribble strip. If it's for a footswitch you have an effect or multiple effects assigned to, you do it by going into the Footswitch Assign menu. The fastest way to do this is by simply touching the footswitch for that effect. When in that menu, you'll see the option to Customize above knob 6. Press that and you can give it a custom name. For footswitches set up as controllers, you can change the label by going in the Command Center, selecting that footswitch, and again, you'll see the Customize option.

 

2) When you see blocks greyed out, it means you don't have enough DSP resources left on that processor to use those. This is part of the Helix's "Dynamic DSP" scheme as explained on page 19 of the manual.

 

The good news is that from your description, I can tell that you're only using one tone path and one processor, so you're actually only using half of the total DSP available to you. If you move some of your blocks down to Path 2, you'll free up DSP resources, and be able to do a lot more. Some blocks are more DSP-intensive than others, and generally, amps, cabs and reverbs are the most DSP-hungry. To see an example of what I'm talking about in regards to moving blocks to different paths, take a look at pages 17 and 18 of the manual.

 

3) The toe switch input allows you to control the "Exp Toe Switch" footswitch remotely. With the rack and Helix control, this is kind of a virtual footswitch, but the jack let's you grab control of it. It does the same thing as the actually expression toe footswitch on the Helix floor unit. Mission Engineering makes an expression pedal that has a built in toe switch that is designed specifically to work with the Helix Rack for this: http://missionengineering.com/?product=sp1-l6h-line-6-helix

[DarrellM5]

Hi,

 

Question 1: the patch name shows up at the top left of the color display.  The scribble strips, by default, will show the name of the effect that particular footswitch is controlling.  You can customize it to say anything you like.  For example, you might set up a footswitch to increase the gain on the amp, turn on a distortion pedal and turn on an eq.  You could customize the scribble strip for that footswitch to say something like "high gain".

 

Question 2:  If items are greyed out in the list, you have run out of DSP on that path.  Keep in mind that each of the 2 paths have their own DSP.  What you could do is have the output block for path 1 go into path 2 and continue adding more blocks.

 

Question 3:  I don't have the rack unit but from what I understand you can get an expression pedal with a toe switch.  The built in pedal on the floor unit has a toe switch already.

 

 

 

 

Edit: Looks like phil_m beat me to it.

[Tcoz]

The out-of-DSP thing is interesting. As you say, different models have different DSP requirements. So greying out the entire menu would seem an interesting thing to do when I might actually have enough DSP in that path for at least some of the available models. I used to run into this a lot on the PDHD500; you'd flip through the models, and for things like amps/harmonizers and such, you'd get the DSP warning, but for things like delays and whatnot, you could still squeeze them in. 

But the second signal path thing should make the difference, though I guess I'll have to understand how to build a signal with a path that doesn't have an amp in it (I don't immediately see a way to split the signal out of the cabinet to the second path). 

The mission pedal thing looks interesting, but I abandoned switch-activated pedals years ago in favor of optical, and even with the M9, Pod and HD500 I always hooked a separate Morley mini pedal up for wah. 

That said though, what we really need is an expression pedal that can activate the switch with an optical sensor. So instead of having to do the "turn on wah pedal with that switch, wah away, turn off wah pedal with that switch," tap dance, you could just step on the wah (activates the switch) step off it (deactivates it). 

Anyway, thanks for the tips on the scribble strips and DSP thing, I have some fiddling to do it seems. 

 

[njglover]

The toe switch of the expression pedal can be assigned to anything, but obviously it is most commonly used to engage/disengage a wah. By default it just switches between EXP 1 and EXP 2, but when a wah is added, it will also turn that on and off. However, you can also assign other things to it, so, for example, for one song I use a volume pedal for swells and also have delay on during only that section. I can assign the delay pedal to the toe switch so that I can deactivate the volume pedal AND turn off the delay in one go. Less foot tapping is always preferable as far as I'm concerned.

[Tcoz]

That I get, I was referring to the Mission pedal though (like any other wah/volume etc that you have to crunch the toe end to get it to switch). To me that's something you shouldn't have to deal with, ever, in an age where we have optical pedals. The HD500 and from what I've heard the Helix built-in pedal, and the Mission as well (from a few posts), you have to LEAN on the thing to get the engage/disengage/change, and the forums are full of people complaining how you constantly "miss", leaving you coming out of your lead with your wah at 100% (ouch...). With a Wah pedal, that's no good at all, not to mention it means you either have to go to full vol/wah one way and then be left at full volume/wah the other). 

Yeah an optical expression pedal would be sweet. 

Don't get me wrong though, Sweetwater ain't getting my Helix back. 

[PeterHamm]

But the second signal path thing should make the difference, though I guess I'll have to understand how to build a signal with a path that doesn't have an amp in it (I don't immediately see a way to split the signal out of the cabinet to the second path). 

 

The output of your path can be set to 2A instead of multi output.

 

Then, you could, for instance, copy the cabinet block... and then paste it down in path 2A, and then go back and delete the cab block...  Now, you can put more stuff before or after the cab block.

 

You also want to have some fun with parallel FX. check that out. Just grab a delay move it up or down in the chain, and move the insert points, you could have parallel delays, or parallel comps, or drives, or what have you.

 

You can also make a "super serial" FX chain using both paths split so there's basically 32 possible FX blocks between input and output.

 

Don't use all 32... I can't imagine a scenario where you can run 32 different blocks and not have it sound like mud.

[PeterHamm]

And the pedals with the toe switch work just peachy, btw. The mission pedal with the toe switch is ONLY needed with Helix Rack. I don't have one yet. I will soon.